Ask GH

Christoph Schachner

We monitor our web-app in Google Analytics but the numbers for Daily Active Users are very unprecise because of variables like seasonal usage, customer or test account status and so on. What do you think is the best practice to do so?

I think the answer really depends on how you're defining "Daily Active Users." What behaviors signal that your users are actively engaged with your product? One obvious metric is # of unique product visitors per day. But, users can log in without actually engaging with your product. It's important to focus on measures of "stickiness". That is, actions users can take (perhaps daily) that signal high LTV.

Here at DocSend, we use Kissmetrics to track usage across our app. For example, some of the unique KPIs we rely on to measure user activity include:
- # of users uploading content (we're a sales CMS)
- # of users generating visits to their content
- # of users hosting live presentations of their content (we integrate with Join.me)

What tool you're using doesn't matter as much as having a clear definition of what constitutes an active user. Indeed, an "active user" might take a series of actions vs. just one action. Here's an article from Appboy's Relate magazine that might be a useful starting point: https://www.appboy.com/blog/best-way-define-active-user/.